dolmazzi group

Do You Love Your Home?: 3 Reasons It’s a Must What do you think of your home? Take a second to reflect on it… What do you feel when you walk in your front door? Do the light, the smells, the tastes, the textures, the sounds of navigating through your morning routine appeal to your senses? Do you feel safe and free? Does your dwelling space feel like a creative depiction of you, or does it feel expressionless? And do you even have much of an opinion on your home at all? It’s no surprise that housing is at the base of renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: safety and shelter. Not much to philosophize there. But, if fostered the right way, the home can be more than that – it’s fertile ground to meet higher levels of need as well, like love and belonging, self-esteem, and achieving your potential. Here are three ways that might help you realize the importance of loving your home: 1) It’s an extension of you. You invest in clothes, a car, and belongings that make you feel good about yourself, right? Just because you don’t bring your home with you everywhere you go, doesn’t mean it’s not a representation of you. You have invested and continue to invest in your home, but it would be a shame to stop simply at the rent or the mortgage. It’s a perfect canvas on which to illustrate your values and what’s important to you – a reflection of the self. 2) You live here. Well, that seems obvious, right? But do you see your home simply as a pitstop that gets trampled by the whirlwind that is life? Or as a welcoming space for relaxation, renewal, and connection? This isn’t your car or your grocery store or your nail salon. You live here. You spend hours and days here. To be fond of what you see and feel when you sleep, wake, and connect – with yourself and others – is crucial. When you spend time in your dwelling space, you deserve to be fueled by the energy you feel there. 3) You plant seeds here. Whether we realize it or not, we are all creators. Creators of relationships, of children, of projects, of meals, of opinions & ideas. We’re always planting seeds. It is important to have a place supportive of both intimacy and hard-to-have conversations, a space conducive to your projects and your work, an area in which you feel contented enough to let your worries, thoughts, and dreams breathe. Is your home a place where the seeds of your creations fall on barren ground, or is it a place of nourishment and growth? * The importance of our relationship with our home isn’t something we think of regularly, or at all. If you’re not happy with your answer to the first question up above, it’s okay. If the only thing you like about your home are the people in it, that’s okay too. There’s always a way to improve it – sometimes a well thought-out but frugal trip to a home goods store will do the trick and other times you’re in need of a change of place completely, but at the very least, sometimes a fresh perspective can kickstart your new relationship with your dwelling space. If you’re feeling a change of place or just want to explore some options, Dolmazzi Group is here to support you. We’d love to help you fall in love with your home.

The Best Time to Go Minimalist You’re packing, you’re boxing. You’re tripping over things. Your house looks like a tornado just passed through. You swear you just used the packing tape but now it’s nowhere in sight. You’re not just overwhelmed – you’re absolutely mind boggled by the amount of pure junk you’ve accumulated over the years. Just…how?! Chaos. Everywhere. Translation: moving. There’s no better time to go minimalist than when you wish you already were. A Chance to Start Fresh You probably crave a fresh look and feel for your new home. Dragging over all your old stuff leaves no room for the new. So clear out. Get rid of things you don’t use. If you wind up cutting down too far, it’s okay. You’ll survive. You’ll be surprised at how little you need to live a happy life. And you don’t have to know exactly how every room will look when you get there. A blank canvas is exciting. You’re already making decisions Where does this box go? Where should I put this keepsake so it doesn’t get lost? Should we really take this loveseat that has been sat on exactly once? Going minimalist from scratch can be intimidating and overwhelming. It requires you to think about the value of everything you own. But during the moving process, you’re naturally forced to be in contact with all your belongings. You’re constantly making decisions about them anyway. There are few times in life when you actually do this. Take advantage and solve two problems at once. Less Stuff, Less Headache Sure, the movers might be doing the heavy lifting. But you’re the one packing, unpacking, organizing, breaking, fixing, losing & finding all your stuff. In short: the more stuff, the more headache. It’s easy to throw your entire junk drawer in a box and not think twice about it – but who really wants to open a container cluttered with miscellaneous odds & ends that sits around for months? And do all those books really make you feel good, or just guilty you haven’t finished them? It’s things like these that deserve attention. If you take time to get rid of what you no longer need, you’ll feel freer and lighter afterward. It may take some extra work at the beginning but guaranteed when you open those boxes in your new home, you’ll thank yourself. No more tripping ? ** Convinced yet? Stay tuned for our next post on practical how-to tips for making minimalism a reality. Or just wanna get the house first and deal with the minimalism later? Call us…we’re here.

Joneses are out. Minimalism is in. Even George Clooney said it: “The big house on a hill is isolating. There’s no other way to say it.” And if Clooney said it, it has to be right, right? No one says you have to be a total rebel and jump on the Tiny House movement (that is, a home with a square footage between 100 and 400 square feet, while the average American home stands at 2,600 square feet2. No, we’re not kidding). But there’s no need to join the constant push toward more, more, more – bigger, greater, richer. Who really wants to clean all those bathrooms anyway? A simpler home might do less damage to your wallet, but what else could it mean for you? Easier to Make Your House a Home It takes dedicated time, energy, money, and thought to turn your house into a home. The buying, the painting, the picking, the matching, the decorating – will you ever really get there with 15 rooms to obsess over? Or will you burn out half way while that third dining room turns into a giant junk drawer? We’re talking simple mathematics here: lower quantity, higher quality. Hanging out in two or three rooms that you absolutely love is much more appealing than a bunch that are just okay. You Can Still Feel Like a Queen Do you want to be rich in life or rich in…bills, mortgages, and debt? Going for the more modest option frees up loads of funds for treating yourself like royalty on the regular. You can now funnel that money into personal conveniences like interior decorators, personal assistants, financial planners, and a weekly cleaning service. Dropping your last dime into your mortgage means, well…cleaning those toilets yourself, honey. Oh, and while you’re at it, check the box for being a good citizen: smaller homes not only save you money – they’re also more energy efficient. If Things Change, You Won’t Feel So Guilty We can talk about square footage and interest rates all day, but feelings are real too. It’s like when you accidentally crush your $8 sunglasses at the beach – not so bad, right? But your Ray-Bans?...different story. We’re not giving you the green light to treat your house like s—something you don’t care about. But if you need to leave, if your job sweeps you somewhere else, or if life throws you a twist, you might not feel so burdened by a simpler home. On the other hand, that mansion you just bought might have you second guessing whether you’ll really take that dream job across country. With yoga teaching us non-attachment, the corporate world slowly becoming desk-less, and digital-nomad jobs in the highest demand, a humbler abode might just be in line with the trends. ** Don’t get us wrong, if you got it, flaunt it! If that big house on the hill rocks your socks, then go for it. Just make sure you’re feeding your own desires, not the market’s…or that ever-insatiable question of ‘what will people think?’ And besides, no one ever liked the Joneses anyway… Tired of keeping up with the Joneses? Dolmazzi Group can help bring it back down to earth. No hassle, no pressure, no pushing for the biggest and best. We’d much rather find the perfect fit for you, promise.